"Conveying Heresy: 'A certayne student' and the Lollard-Hussite Fellowship", Viator 38 (2007): 217-234. (original) (raw)

On 8 September 1410, Richard Wyche and John Oldcastle both dispatched letters to Bohemia, sent from London and Cooling Castle (Kent), respectively. These letters pose difficult questions about Anglo-Bohemian textual transmission, questions which become still more interesting when we recall that four letters written by a Scottish preacher named Quentin Folkhyrde were also sent to Bohemia the same year, suggesting that a kind of network existed among heretics in England, Scotland, and Bohemia. 1 Speculation as to who might have carried the letters to Bohemia has been cautious but not unfruitful. 2 Most recently, Anne Hudson called attention to some neglected details concerning this correspondence, demonstrating that we may have more information available to us about communication between England and Bohemia than had previously been supposed (even if this information raises more questions than it answers). 3 I wish to revisit some of this same correspondence here-together with additional evidence that has not yet been fully considered-in order to extend the investigation in some new and significant directions.